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Managers wanted: the sector’s recruitment drive for the new role of building safety manager

Among Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations for fire safety after the Grenfell tragedy was to require building safety managers for high-risk residential properties. Kate Youde finds out what the job will entail and what the sector thinks. Illustration by Paul Young

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Managers wanted: an introduction to the new role of building safety manager – @kateyoude reports for @insidehousing #UKhousing

Among Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendations for fire safety after the Grenfell tragedy was to require building safety managers for high-risk residential properties. @kateyoude finds out what the job will entail and what the sector thinks #UKhousing

Residents of Greater Manchester are “doing their homework” and challenging their landlord. “They’re asking great questions like, ‘what is the fire retardancy of the product you are fitting?’” says Pete Paton, head of building safety at Trafford Housing Trust (THT).

Until his recent promotion, Mr Paton was one of two building safety managers (BSMs) at the 9,000-home association tasked with overseeing the safety of its high-risk buildings and the people living inside. The role includes engaging with tenants and making sure that any works carried out, or contractors entering properties, are properly vetted.

Dame Judith Hackitt, chair of the Industry Safety Steering Group, has called THT an “exemplar” for its BSMs, a new post required by many social landlords under upcoming legislation. She has urged THT to consider seconding these staff to other associations implementing the role.

“If you’re expecting them to have the engineering understanding and the superior health and safety regulatory understanding, and also be able to deal with tenant engagement and manage those processes, you’re looking at quite an exceptional person really”

This comes at a time when this role is under the spotlight. The draft Building Safety Bill, presented to parliament last July, requires all occupied “higher-risk buildings” – expected to be blocks of 18m, or six storeys, and above initially – to have a BSM.

This means the sector is in the midst of a recruitment drive – bringing in people to take on this new role at a time when it could not be more important.

So what should social landlords be seeking?


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The role will include managing the building in accordance with the safety case report, an assessment by the ‘accountable person’ (the social landlord) of the building safety risks and steps taken to prevent a major incident or reduce the severity of one. There must be a resident engagement strategy and the accountable person must promote “a strong partnership” between residents and the BSM, who will ensure compliance with the new Building Safety Regulator.

The manager must have the “skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours” to carry out the role, with further details of the position expected in secondary legislation. The regulator will have the power to veto an appointment.

An impact assessment, published last July, assumed that one BSM might oversee 10 buildings. However, Amanda Stubbs, a partner at Trowers & Hamlins, says many of her clients are working to an earlier estimate
of between five and eight properties.

She thinks landlords will find it challenging to fill the post. “If you’re expecting them to have the engineering understanding and the superior health and safety regulatory understanding, and also be able to deal with tenant engagement and manage those processes, you’re looking at quite an exceptional person really,” she says. “Those skills don’t typically come in one person.”

They might not need to. Anthony Taylor, chair of Working Group 8, the part of the Industry Response Group tasked with developing the competence framework for the BSM, says that in discussions with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the roles are seen as management positions.

“There are plenty of jobs advertised as building safety managers, but if you actually read the specification, they’re all doing very different roles, so people are trying to find their feet and work out how they can map to the law”

“No singular person is going to have all the skillsets necessary to keep an eye on everything, they can’t be expert at everything, so they’ve got to be able to manage the experts and have the competence and the confidence to challenge the information they get and understand what they’re talking about,” he says.

Working Group 8 has grouped the technical knowledge needed by a BSM under six headings: building systems, building operations, risk management, leadership and planning, operational practice, and monitoring and control. Positive behaviours needed are honesty, accuracy, respect, integrity, responsibility and capability.

This work is informing the creation of a Publicly Available Specification, a standardisation document defining good practice, which Mr Taylor expects to go out for public consultation this summer.

Mr Taylor is also interim chair of the Building Safety Alliance, comprising about 35 professional bodies, which held its first meeting in March. This new independent body will assess and keep a national register of BSMs. “That does not mean to say that is the only way, and getting on the BSM register is not going to automatically deem you as competent for that particular building because that’s the regulator’s job, but it’ll go a long way to show the regulator you know what you’re talking about,” says Mr Taylor.

He thinks the role will attract people from different backgrounds such as fire, property, engineering and facilities management, so the intent is that people taking the assessment will be “measured in exactly the same manner”.

Housing providers are “making great progress” on the legislation according to Mr Taylor. “There are plenty of jobs advertised as BSM but if you actually read the specification, they’re all doing very different roles, so people are trying to find their feet and work out how they can map to the law,” he says.

THT recruited two BSMs in 2019 in what it claims was a UK first. Each is responsible for 16 of 32 high-risk buildings identified by the landlord. Only seven are taller than 18m; the others include a shorter tower, 17 sheltered housing schemes, three extra-care schemes and a handful of houses in multiple occupation.

“We did an assessment to find out where the real risk lies and it actually lies in our sheltered and supported schemes,” explains Iain Wallace, director of property services at THT. “One of our biggest contributors, sadly, towards fires is dementia.”

Clarion Housing Group has 69 high-rise buildings. To date it has recruited four BSMs, who will each manage 10, and has a dedicated building safety case manager.

Seven of the 125,000-home association’s employees are taking part in a nine-month pilot of a qualification designed to train staff for this role. Launched in early February, the Level 6 Diploma in Building Safety Management, accredited by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), is delivered by weekly webinars and should take 12 months to complete.

Dan Hollas, project fire director at Clarion, says the course gives managers “an in-depth understanding of the role beyond the technical aspects and includes stakeholder management and resident engagement”.

“They know that if they don’t gear up early there will only be so many people in the market who can do that job and they need to start getting themselves ready”

Participants are giving feedback as they learn to the training provider Housing LMS, which is then making “minor tweaks” to the course, according to its managing director Roger Gillespie. Thirteen people from landlords and property and construction consultancies started the diploma in late February, with another 20 due to start this spring. There will be a further intake in May.

The demand has surprised Mr Gillespie. “We are rolling it out as fast as they are asking for it,” he explains. He adds that there is flexibility in the syllabus to adapt to further changes in legislation.

Jamie Ratcliff, executive director for business performance and partnerships at Network Homes, expects significant changes when the legislation returns to parliament. The 20,000-home landlord has a building safety team investigating its stock, identifying where remediation is needed and putting in place funding plans for the work. Following consultation, the organisation is close to publishing a resident engagement strategy for high-risk buildings.

Jamie Ratcliffe, executive director for business performance and partnerships at Network Homes, says the housing association has decided to “skill up” junior employees with a fire safety background rather than recruiting
Jamie Ratcliffe, executive director for business performance and partnerships at Network Homes, says the housing association has decided to “skill up” junior employees with a fire safety background rather than recruiting

Mr Ratcliff does not think recruiting people to this post now is necessarily useful because of the “huge amount of uncertainty”. Instead, Network has decided initially to “skill up” junior employees who might have fire safety experience but need more technical knowledge.

“Until we’re completely clear what is in a building safety case, then it can’t be clear what responsibilities a BSM’s going to have in relation to that,” he says.

Clarity is not imminent: the bill is expected to come into force later this year, but it will likely be about three years before everything is up and running.

“A lot of our housing clients are finding it quite difficult that they’re hoping to have something concrete to hang off decisions to appoint somebody on a salary of £100,000, for example, but equally they know that if they don’t gear up early there will only be so many people in the market who can do that job and they need to start getting themselves ready,” says Ms Stubbs.

Mr Wallace, who worked with the CIOB on developing the new course and has set up a monthly BSM forum for organisations to discuss best practice and guidance, says recruiting for the role is “not that expensive” – £55,000 per person plus on-costs – or difficult.

He says that prior to the Grenfell Tower fire, landlords focused on five main areas of risk management: fire, water, electricity, gas and asbestos. “But when you’ve got somebody based in the building who picks up all the other stuff that isn’t really captured anywhere, it really does provide that holistic management of all associated risks and creates great benefit,” he says.

It makes people safer, Mr Wallace adds. “The key message is: it works.”

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